


Echoes

by Usedtobehmc



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley's Plants (Good Omens), Flashbacks, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Traumatized Crowley, i have a lot of intense feelings about the way crowley treats his plants, reliving trauma as a coping mechanism, traumatized aziraphale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 12:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19905631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Usedtobehmc/pseuds/Usedtobehmc
Summary: The way Crowley treats his plants seems very familiar to Aziraphale.





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story about grief. And trauma. Different people react to it in different ways. And I tried to draw off my own life experience for this admittedly very short story for such a big topic. 
> 
> I only started writing for the Good Omens fandom recently, so if any of y'all wanna recommend or reblog, go ahead!

Aziraphale holds his rapidly-cooling tea to his lips but doesn’t drink; he’s frozen with an all-encompassing dread as he listens to Crowley ‘tend’ to his plants in the other room. The door is shut, but Crowley’s rampage is easily heard. There is screaming, occasionally something will be thrown across the room. Worst of all, periods of quiet only broken by the low tones of terrifying, hateful utterances that he can’t understand but can definitely interpret. 

A cold tremor starts in his gut and makes its way slowly through his body until it reaches his fingertips and he has to set his cup down, lest he spill from the shakes. He wrings his hands together and pushes them into his lap to still them. He feels a bit sick. 

As much as Crowley is a demon, he is rarely... cruel. And this is a specific type of cruel that Aziraphale hadn’t been privy to in a very long while. He flinches as he hears a flower pot smash against the wall, the fern inside likely perishing with it. 

Suddenly he feels like a fledgling angel again, secretly listening in on exchanges that he really wished he hadn’t. He’d been told *specifically* that these conversations were not for him to hear. But he’d been a young angel, full of wonder and a thirst for closeness to his brothers and sisters. And all it had left him with was... uncertainty and terror. 

Once again, he feels a sense of hopeless fear, powerlessness that comes with knowing someone is receiving far too harsh a punishment and being unable to do anything to stop it.

He honestly does not register the tear falling down his cheek until Crowley sweeps into the room with a flourish, hips swaying and chin held high. Aziraphale releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding and hastily moves to wipe the tear away, averting his gaze to the ground. 

It turns out he wasn’t hasty enough, as Crowley pauses mid-stride and notices immediately that something is amiss. “Awright?” he asks, tentative. 

Aziraphale knows he won’t manage to get a word out without losing his composure, and shakes his head in lieu of falling apart. He glances up and inhales deeply, but the air comes back out as a telltale shudder and his lip trembles, completely blowing his cover. The silence is stretching on and on, and his feelings of dread inside grow exponentially with each second he lets pass without an answer. This whole afternoon has gone South so fast that he’d be shocked to come away without whiplash. But he knows he has to say something. He HAS to say something eventually. Crowley is looking at him, seemingly unaware of the effect his tirade has had. 

The angel stands and says something that can’t possibly be generously interpreted as English and for lack of a better word, flees. He heads straight for the room Crowley came from with as much haste as he can muster and shuts the door behind him, hands shaking violently as he locks the door. As it clicks he hears Crowley asking for him, confused and alarmed. 

Aziraphale covers his ears to try and gather his thoughts, blocking out Crowley’s voice. The tears begin to fall in earnest now, they feel hot and thick and no matter how he paws at his eyes they won’t stop coming. As soon as he pushes the moisture out of his eyes, it’s there again. Now he’s weeping, chest pulling tight and face crumpling into an ugly mask of grief. 

There is a tall fern in the corner, lush and beautiful, that towers over all the others. The favorite, the eldest, the special one, under so much pressure... At the base of it’s pot is the smashed and ruined remains of a lesser. Already wilted, roots twisted and sprawled on the floor, surrounded by a ring of dirt and pottery shards. Aziraphale falls to his knees and embraces it. He actually lays his hands on the torn leaves and rests his forehead against the dirt surrounding it. 

“I’m sorry,” the words force their way out from between gritted teeth and it doesn’t even sound like his voice. “It’s my fault. I should have stopped it.” He feels the cool brush of verdant fronds on the nape of his neck, as though the plants were trying to comfort him. “I could have said something… I could have said anything at all.” 

His heart clenches when he hears the door opening behind him, the lock disobedient.

“Don’t you know he didn’t mean it?” Aziraphale calls out, sobbing into the dirt. “He did his best. He did his  _ best _ .” There is only silence behind him, there is always silence in the face of questions. Deafening, cacophonous silence.

A hand lands on Aziraphale’s shoulder and he whirls around, shocked to see that it’s Crowley sans sunglasses, with a wrecked expression on his angular features. 

Aziraphale doesn’t know why he’s shocked. Who else would have stood there? “Crowley, I…” He tries to dry his face, but his hands are covered in dirt, and he suspects he’s making everything worse by trying to fix it. “I don’t know what came over me. Isn’t that,” he sniffs and tries to laugh. “Isn’t that odd?”

There’s dirt on his jacket, though it’s probably closer to mud now. Dirt on his pants where he still kneels on the floor. His clothes are ruined, he’s ruined their tea time, he’s ruined everything.

Crowley sinks to the floor slowly and holds his arms out. He holds his arms open even as Aziraphale forces a chuckle, feigns confusion, and tries to pretend he doesn’t know why Crowley is doing it. A gentle but pointed look finally breaks through whatever wall Aziraphale is trying to put back up and the burning tears return. 

Aziraphale feels his face crumple again, contorting with anguish. He’d almost turned it off. But he lets his hands fall helplessly to his sides and he leans, tipping over into Crowley’s embrace. The demon receives him silently, enfolding him in a tight hug that says many things at once. There is a hint of an apology, but mostly it’s a hug that says…

I know how you feel. 


End file.
